What are the differences between Sanda and Muay Thai?

Many people don’t know what Sanda and Muay Thai are, and people often associate the two martial arts together. In fact, Sanda’s movements are relatively fast, while Muay Thai is a type of boxing that is very accurate and fierce. However, there are many differences between Sanda and Muay Thai. Some people who practice these two martial arts often have trouble distinguishing them. But today we are going to introduce the difference between Sanda and Muay Thai. Let everyone analyze it through our introduction. Let’s take a look.

Let’s talk about Sanda first. The advantage of Sanda is its comprehensive techniques. Except for the lack of ground techniques, it basically covers all aspects of fighting techniques. And because Sanda is quite popular in China, there are professional Sanda coaches teaching students in many gyms, boxing gyms and other places. It's pretty good in terms of self-defense. The disadvantages of Sanda are also obvious. As a competition that was determined to be conducted in a point-scoring manner when it was founded, Sanda does not pay much attention to the ability to hit hard, especially the whip kick is far less lethal than the sweep kick. In addition, the comprehensiveness of Sanda is both an advantage and a disadvantage to some extent. Some students have studied it for half a year and still cannot beat boxers in actual combat.

The advantage of Muay Thai is that it is more lethal than Sanda. If you learn the sweeping kicks, elbows and knees well, they are more than enough to deal with ordinary people. The disadvantages are: first, there are very few regular Muay Thai gyms in China, and many so-called Muay Thai coaches are people who started out practicing Sanda and have never formally learned orthodox Muay Thai techniques. Especially in some small cities, it is impossible to find a formal Muay Thai gym. If you go to some boxing gyms that are not what you want, you will never learn authentic Muay Thai techniques; secondly, Muay Thai techniques have very high requirements on physical conditions, especially bone hardness. Practicing hardness is very painful, and many enthusiasts find it difficult to persist; thirdly, Muay Thai has great lethality, so it is easier to cause injuries during actual combat training. Some enthusiasts easily develop fear after seeing others injured or themselves being hit hard; finally, Muay Thai's technical system is relatively less complete than Sanda, without wrestling or ground techniques, and its speed is slower than Sanda. If you use pure Muay Thai techniques to fight Sanda, it is easy to lose by points if you don't have an advantage in terms of striking power and resistance to blows. Moreover, knee attacks can be easily countered by opponents using wrestling techniques.

In short, if you are in a small city where fighting is not very developed, learning Sanda is more suitable for you. If there is a good boxing gym in your city, you can consider learning Muay Thai. And in my experience, whether it is Sanda or Muay Thai, you must go to a boxing gym to learn. It is impossible to learn formal techniques by self-study.

These are the differences between Sanda and Muay Thai. Sanda is a Chinese martial art, while Muay Thai is a common martial art in Thailand. These two martial arts are not from the same country, but for us Chinese, we still think that our country's sports are better. Sanda is also very powerful. If Sanda is used against Muay Thai, we believe that we will get better results.